China Pushes to End Public Shaming

The Ministry of Public Security has ordered the police to stop parading suspects in public after a growing outcry.

ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — The Chinese government has called for an end to the public shaming of criminal suspects, a time-honored cudgel of Chinese law enforcement but one that has increasingly rattled the public.

According to the state-run media, the Ministry of Public Security has ordered the police to stop parading suspects in public and has called on local departments to enforce laws in a “rational, calm and civilized manner.”

The new regulations are thought to be a response to the public outcry over a recent spate of “shame parades,” in which those suspected of being prostitutes are shackled and forced to walk in public.

Last October, the police in Henan Province took to the Internet, posting photographs of women suspected of being prostitutes. Other cities have been publishing the names and addresses of convicted sex workers and those of their clients. The most widely circulated images, taken this month in the southern city of Dongguan, included young women roped together and paraded barefoot through crowded city streets.

The police later said they were not punishing the women, but only seeking their help in the pursuit of an investigation.

The public response, at least on the Internet, has tended toward outrage, with many postings expressing sympathy for the women. “Why aren’t corrupt officials dragged through the streets?” read one posting. “These women are only trying to feed themselves.”

But much of the anger has been directed at the police, who are a focus of growing public mistrust. Although corruption among the police is rife in China, the disdain has been further heightened by a series of widely publicized episodes involving the torture of detainees, suspects who mysteriously died in custody and innocent people jailed on trumped-up evidence.

One man spent 10 years in prison for murder after the police extracted his confession — only to be freed when his supposed victim turned out to be alive.

Mao Shoulong, a professor of public policy at People’s University in Beijing, said the new regulations were necessary to rein in the worst impulses of the police.

“There are more modern tools for law enforcement,” he said. “Besides, if these kinds of tactics are allowed, the police will get used to dealing with problems outside of the law.”

The most recent wave of prostitution arrests involving thousands of suspects is part of a seven-month “strike hard” campaign aimed at gambling, drug use and violent crime. As part of the increased law enforcement efforts, judicial authorities have been encouraged to mete out swifter, and harsher, punishment. It is the fourth such campaign since 1983.

Public shaming of the accused and the condemned has been a long tradition in China — one that the Communist Party embraced with zeal during episodes of class struggle and anticrime crusades. Although public executions have been discontinued, provincial cities still hold mass sentencing rallies, during which convicts wearing confessional placards are driven though the streets in open trucks.

The practice has also taken hold in some Chinese neighborhoods of New York, with some supermarket owners threatening to post photographs of shoplifters and call the police unless the suspects hand over cash, sometimes demanding hundreds of dollars. The legality of the practice, however, remains in question.

It is unclear whether the directive against the humiliation of suspects will have the desired effect. Similar rules and regulations have been passed down through the years, beginning in 1988, when the Supreme People’s Court ordered prosecutors and the police to protect the identities of the accused. In 2007, the country’s top judicial and law enforcement bodies issued a similar notice that forbade the parading of convicts.

Even if such directives must be issued repeatedly, Joshua Rosenzweig of the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group, said he was somewhat encouraged that the government recognized the need to abolish such practices.

“Repetition can increase pressure and help force change, but ultimately it will take a great deal of political will to implement these kinds of changes,” he said.

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